[CAMERA] Alex Safian - The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy by professors Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer uses numerous false or falsified quotations attributed to Israeli leaders to make its argument. Thus they claim that the following statement by Israel's first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, proved that Israel was always intent on expelling and dispossessing the Palestinians: "After the formation of a large army in the wake of the establishment of the state, we shall abolish partition and expand to the whole of Palestine" (p. 93). The quote is from a meeting of the Jewish Agency Executive, and here's what Ben-Gurion actually said according to the meeting protocol: "Mr. Ben-Gurion: The starting point for a solution of the question of the Arabs in the Jewish state is, in his view, the need to prepare the ground for an Arab-Jewish agreement; he supports the Jewish state [on a small part of Palestine], not because he is satisfied with part of the country, but on the basis of the assumption that after we constitute a large force following the establishment of the state - we will cancel the partition [of the country between Jews and Arabs] and we will expand throughout the Land of Israel." "Mr. Shapira [a JAE member]: By force as well?" "Mr. Ben-Gurion: Through mutual understanding and Jewish-Arab agreement. So long as we are weak and few the Arabs have neither the need nor the interest to conclude an alliance with us....We are obliged to run the state in such a way that will win us the friendship of the Arabs both within and outside the state." In other words, Ben-Gurion was stating exactly the opposite of what Walt and Mearsheimer would have their readers believe.
2008-02-15 01:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive